Saturday, 18 April 2015

Blog Tour: Death in the Rainy Season by Anna Jaquiery.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia; the rainy season. When a French man, Hugo Quercy, is found brutally murdered, Commandant Serge Morel finds his holiday drawn to an abrupt halt. Quercy - dynamic, well-connected - was the magnetic head of a humanitarian organisation which looked after the area's neglected youth.

Opening his investigation, the Parisian detective soon finds himself buried in one of his most challenging cases yet. Morel must navigate this complex and politically sensitive crime in a country with few forensic resources, and armed with little more than a series of perplexing questions: what was Quercy doing in a hotel room under a false name? What is the significance of his recent investigations into land grabs in the area? And who could have broken into his home the night of the murder?

Becoming increasingly drawn into Quercy's circle of family and friends - his adoring widow, his devoted friends and bereft colleagues - Commandant Morel will soon discover that in this lush land of great beauty and immense darkness, nothing is quite as it seems . . .

A deeply atmospheric crime novel that bristles with truth and deception, secrets and lies: Death in the Rainy Season is a compelling mystery that unravels an exquisitely wrought human tragedy.

Forensic Investigations

by Anna Jaquiery

Recently, I was driving my 11 year-old son to his tennis lesson after an afternoon of research into hypothermia, and what related signs a forensic pathologist might look for during an autopsy. This research was part of the third book I’m currently writing in the Commandant Morel series. I was so interested in what I’d read that I had to tell my son about it. Funnily enough, he didn’t share my enthusiasm. Halfway through my description, he told me politely to move on to something other than the state of a dead person’s stomach lining.

Researching my novels has provided a glimpse into the world of forensic medicine. While writing The Lying-Down Room and Death in the Rainy Season, I called on the expertise of a forensic pathologist based here in Melbourne. He was good enough to make time in his busy schedule for a crime writer. We met near the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine. We talked about drowning. I found it a little surreal, the first time, to be asking him questions about the state of a fictional character’s lungs in The Lying-Down Room. His responses were meticulous. I think for him it was a matter of professional pride. In his view, TV crime series got so many things wrong when it came to forensics. He said he couldn’t watch CSI without losing his temper. The second time, I called him just as he was about to sit down to dinner. While his wife waited patiently for the call to end, we talked earnestly about the jelly-like substance of the brain.

One of the things that has stayed with me, from the conversations he and I have had, is that forensic medicine isn’t an exact science. Sometimes the physical evidence isn’t enough and you have to turn to your powers of deduction. Beyond what the body reveals, you have to look at the circumstances surrounding a person’s death. Skills, experience, and intuition all come into play.